Jeff Ellis: It's Impossible To Start A Fire If You Have No Desire To Burn

The Person Of The Year

Time Magazine has announced their "Person Of The Year."

A lot of us thought (and were dreading that possibility) that Time would slavishly give the title to Barack Obama.

Well, amazingly enough, Time did not jump at another excuse to put Barack Obama on the cover.

But seriously -- Ben Bernacke?

Perhaps the only thing positive thing that Bernacke has brought to this year is evidence that occasionally, Republican senators can find common ground with Bernie Sanders.  Sen. Sanders, the only self-acknowledged socialist in the U.S. Senate, has recently joined with conservative Republicans Jim Bunning and Jim DeMint in opposing Bernacke's nomination to another four years in charge of the Fed.

Honestly, the person of the year was Michael Jackson.  His death and the subsequent circus that has surrounded it has come to represent the current state of the world.  If 2009 played like a heavy-handed satire, nothing was more heavy-handed than the death of Michael Jackson.

Triumph of the Will

I watched a bit of the Michael Jackson Memorial Service at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.  It was a uniquely American spectacle in that it managed to be touching, horrifying, and mind-numbingly predictable all at the same time.

One has to wonder if anyone outside of the world of Media and Media-junkies really cared.

Farrah Fawcett, R.I.P.

Two pop cultural icons died today -- actress Farrah Fawcett and the self-declared "King of Pop" Michael Jackson.  As of right now, Jackson is commanding the majority of attention.  A lot of this is due to the fact that Jackson's death was unexpected whereas Fawcett had been battling cancer for more than a year now.  Fawcett's death was expected.

There's a lot that can be said about the strange and disturbing life of Michael Jackson.  Unfortunately, very little of it is positive and quite frankly, it's nothing that really needs to be discussed within the hours of his (or anyone else's) death.  This is the time for Jackson's family to mourn and they deserve to have this time (as any family would) before one considers the exact path that may have led to Jackson's death.

So, I am going to take this time to remember Farrah Fawcett because, unfortunately, she's already being forgottenand overshadowed.  There was nothing in Fawcett's early career that gave any indication that she would eventually become one of the better actresses working in American television and film.  She made her film debut with an insipid role in an insipid movie, 1970's Myra Breckenridge.  A few years later, she had either the luck or misfortune to end up as the break-out star of Charlie's Angels.  It's always tempting to cite Charlie's Angels as a TV show that was exactly what it claimed to be, just an hour a pretty girls and campy fun.  Unfortunately, that's really not true.  Charlie's Angels was, even for its time, an amazingly insipid show and the reruns, other than when being played in the background during a Butthole Surfers concert, are dull to the point of being unwatchable.  It was during this time that Farrah posed for the famous pin-up that decorated every boy's bedroom in the 70s.  It was also during this time that she appeared in a small role in Logan's Run, a flawed but enjoyable sci-fi film.

Simply on the basis of this early work, one might be justified in dismissing Farrah Fawcett as an actress.  Indeed, when Farrah left Charlie's Angels, most people assumed that she would be forgotten.  And, at first, it seemed that she would be.  Then, she appeared in a devastating TV movie entitled The Burning Bed.  The Burning Bed was based on a true story about an abused woman who ended up burning her lout of a husband alive as he lay in bed.  Playing an abused, victimized woman, Fawcett brought an appealing earthiness to the role that she was never allowed to show in her previous glamour roles. 

After the Burning Bed, Fawcett was a regular presence in TV movies and occasionally appeared in film.  She gave another shattering performance as another victimized woman in the film version of Extremitiess.  The film itself is a bit of trial to sit through but Fawcett gave one of her best performances. 

However, to me, Fawcett's best performance was as Robert Duvall's unfaithful yet undeniably sympathetic wife in The Apostle.  If there was ever a performance that should have won an Academy Award nomination for Farrah Fawcett, it was this one.

Farrah Fawcett, R.I.P.

My favorite exploitation trailers -- Part 1 (Ms. 45, An American Hippie in Israel, The House On The Edge of the Park, Cannibal Holocaust, and a film with a title I can't bring myself to say)

As I've mentioned many times on this blog, I love the exploitation films and grindhouse cinema of the 70s and early 80s. The only thing I love more than a sleazy, subversive exploitation film is a trailer for a sleazy, subversive exploitation film. Even more so than with mainstream films, exploitation trailers tended to give you the best scenes of the film without any of the unnecessary filler. Exploitation trailers, as well, had the task of convincing potential filmgoers to pay money to see movies that they knew would never live up to even the lowest of expectations. As such, exploitation film trailers developed a personality all their own. They became the equivalent of the sweaty carnival barker who, disgusting as his exterior may be, still knew how to talk the talk.

I've spent the past two days searching through the videos of YouTube and I've managed to find twenty of my personal favorites. I'll be posting these trailers on this site over the next couple of days.

A quick warning: Some of these trailers contain material that could be considered offensive by some. Indeed, quite a few actually violate YouTube's terms of service and it wouldn't surprise me if the majority are removed from the site over the next week.

(Between the time I first started looking and the time I started writing this post, four trailers for Cannibal Holocaust were yanked off the site. I ended up embedding the fifth but I'll be surprised if it's still around a week from now.)

So, watch these trailers now while you still can but proceed with caution if you're easily offended or disturbed.

Let's start things off with a high point in both exploitation cinema and exploitation trailers -- Abel Ferrara's Ms. 45. Featuring a shattering performance from the late Zoe Tamerlis, Ms. 45 is one of the most intense (and, quite frankly, disturbing) films ever made. The trailer perfectly captures the film's bleak and claustrophobic mix of sensuality and violence.

This next trailer is for a western that features Fred Williamson as a former slave who rides into a frontier town and declares himself to be the new sheriff. I'm not going to mention the film's title for reasons that will be obvious upon watching the trailer. Those of you who remember Robert Townsend's Hollywood Shuffle will be forgiven for thinking that this is actually a parody. I can assure you that this is a real film because I've seen it. It's actually a pretty by-the-numbers western once you get over the "Did-I-Just-Hear-That?" factor but Williamson's always been an engaging screen presence and he and the late D'Urville Martin always made a good team.

This next trailer is for a film I have never actually seen. The trailer for An American Hippie In Isreal has been popping up on various DVDs for nearly a decade now yet the film itself has not actually been released. This has given the film a certain mystique that it probably does not deserve. From what I've been able to learn, the film was apparently made in the early 70s and, depending on who you ask, it is either amazingly pretentious or numbingly dull or both.

Still, whenever this film is finally released on DVD, I'll be one of the first suckers wasting his money on it. Why? The trailer kicks ass. Plus, I used to date a girl who was the daughter of a former American Hippie In Isreal. So, there's definitely a nostalgia factor at work here. That said, the film's protaganist certainly seems a bit surly (and old) for a hippie, doesn't he?

(By the way, this trailer contains some very brief female nudity. It also features a scrawny bald guy who apparently foams at the mouth at some point during the film.)

Next up, we have an extremely edited version of the trailer for The House on The Edge of the Park. In many ways, this is a truly reprehensible film. The characters are all unlikable, the finale is only shocking because it essentially makes no sense, and the film is full of scenes that are so blatantly sexist and sadistic that NOW -- if the organization had any sense of irony -- could probably use the film in much the same way that pro-marijuana groups used to use Reefer Madness. But I can't help it. I like this movie. It's a genuine guilty pleasure. The villians are played by two of my favorite genre actors -- David Hess and the great Giovanni Lombardo Radice -- and no film that features the beautiful (and actually quite talented) Lorraine De Selle can be totally worthless.

As I stated previously, this is a heavily edited version of the film's trailer (essentially, all of the nudity and some straight razor slicing has been cut out, presumably to make it YouTube acceptable). That's not really a problem. If anything, it tightens the whole thing up and, as such, it's actually a bit of an improvement on the original.

Three things to notice about this trailer. 1) Yes, it does say House Of The Park On The Edge. 2) The actual film tends to drag which is something the trailer never does. 3) The disco song that plays at the end -- Do It To Me Once More/Love Me All Night Long...oh my God! This is a terrible song but it does get stuck in your head! I eventually ended up downloading it off of Amazon.

Let's wrap up part one with one of the most controversial films of all time,Cannibal Holocaust.  Despite rumors to the contrary, no human were harmed while making this film.  However, a lot of animals were and that's what makes this such a problematic film.  In my opinion, if you ignore the scenes of the cast killing animals (the gigantic water turtle is the best known of the victims but there are plenty of others), then Cannibal Holocaust is, in its own way, one of the greatest films ever made.  Unfortunately, you really can't ignore all the animal cruelty because it was filmed and included in the film's final cut. 

Regardless of all that, this trailer is a classic.  It's also rather explicit so it wouldn't surprise me if this video gets yanked off of YouTube in the next couple of days (or hours).  This trailer also highlights one of the more unexpected strengths of Cannibal Holocaust.  For a film that often goes out of its way to be ugly, Cannibal Holocaust features a truly beautiful soundtrack. Strangely enough, the same man who created the opulent tackiness of The House on The Edge of the Park's disco theme song, Riz Ortolani, was responsible for the haunting theme music of Cannibal Holocaust. (Of course, it should also be mentioned that both films were directed by Ruggero Deodato.)

Today's Flashback

Kiss Them For Me, from Siouxsie and the Banshees.

The Wall Of Sound

 

First, O.J. Simpson gets sentenced to 33 years in prison for armed robbery (though, of course, we can guess for which crime Simpson was actually being sentenced).

Now, legendary music producer Phil Spector has been convicted of murdering actress Lana Clarkson.  Spector is now facing the prospect of spending the rest of his life in prison.

(Though quite a few people -- like me -- feel that Spector should have been put away 28 years ago for attempting to murder the Ramones with the End of the Century album.)

What this means, of course, is that out of the Trinity of 70s Celebrities Accused Of Murdering Light-Haired Women In California, only Robert Blake has so far managed to avoid prison. 

(That said, it should also be noted that out of that trio, Blake's probably the only one who was actually wrongfully accused.  Ever since Blake was first arrested, I was always a member of the "Christian-Brando-Did-It" contigent.)

Is it possible that we are now entering an age where celebrities actually can be convicted in a court of law? 

In all seriousness, one of the unfortunate side effects of celebrity murder trials is that the fame of the accused often ends up overshadowing the tragedy of the victim.  In most of the stories I've read concerning Spector's trial, Lana Clarkson has been described as a "B-movie" actress and this isn't quite fair to her.  Lana Clarkson was not a B-movie actress.  Instead, she was a talented actress who happened to appear in a lot of B-movies.  To dismissively refer to her as a "B-movie actress" diminishes the fact that -- regardless of the quality of the film she was appearing in -- Clarkson was one of those likable, energetic actresses who was always better than the material she had to work with. 

Most stories mention that her best known role was in a film called Barbarian Queen, as if Clarkson were some type of Troy McClure-type hack whose life could be judged solely on the basis of the titles of the films that she appeared in.  What those stories don't mention is the fact that she actually gave a pretty memorable performance in Barbarian Queen.

(Though the Clarkson performance I would recommend would have to be her performance in a film called The Haunting of Morella.  The film itself is pretty bad but Clarkson's performance is very good.)

And who could forget her as the improbable wife of Vincent Schiavelli in Fast Times At Ridgemont High?

Rest in peace, Lana Clarkson.

You deserved better.

Taken

 

Last Tuesday, I went and saw Taken, a movie directed by Pierre Morel and starring Liam Neeson.  In America, Taken opened about a month ago and it has since become the first surprise hit of 2009.  Audiences are not only flocking to the movie but are apparently even returning for a second look.  I went to the movie intending to discover why. 

And what did I discover?

Taken works.

How to describe Taken?  In a word, cathartic.  It's difficult to think of the last time a movie generated so much audience goodwill by graphically detailing a series of homicides.

It helps, of course, that the people being killed are a bunch of dirty-looking Albanian white slavers and that the man doing the killing is Liam Neeson.  In the movie, Neeson plays a retired CIA agent who simply wants to bond with his teenage daughter (played a surprisingly sweet Maggie Grace).  His efforts are foiled by 1) his own paranoid nature, 2) his ex-wife's lingering bitterness, and 3) the fact that his daughter, a U2 groupie, goes to Paris in an effort to follow the band and ends up getting kidnapped by the previously mentioned Albanians.

Now, if this movie had been made by an American studio, one imagines that -- at this point -- Neeson would somehow get it into his head that Bono, The Edge, Larry, and Adam are responsible for his daughter's disappearance.  After an initial confrontation, Neeson and the band would form an uneasy alliance to rescue his daughter.  One imagines that they would also be helped by a comedic roadie who just happened to be Albanian -- just to make sure that nobody walked away from the film convinced that all dirty, sweaty Albanians make a living out of kidnapping innocent white virgins.  Neeson and the band would bond and the movie would probably end with Neeson replacing whichever member of the band ended up getting killed during the rescue operation (it would probably be Adam, don't you think?)

However, this isn't a Hollywood film.  It's a low budget, French film and it was written and produced by Luc Besson, who has never met a B-movie archetype that he didn't love.  As such, Neeson goes to Paris searching for his daughter and spends about 75 minutes of screen time, more or less, killing people.

You might guess from what I've just written that I didn't care much for Taken.  You would be wrong.  As a movie, Taken works.  Yes, the movie's violence occasionally threatens to cross the line into pure sadism,  And yes, it is a bit bizarre how easily Neeson manages to track down the guilty Albanians once he reaches Paris.  And yes, the film does end with a coda that seems to suggest that the filmmakers are ignorant of the concept of post-traumatic stress disorder.

But none of that matters because, in the end, Taken works.

The main reason why the movie works is because of Liam Neeson's work in the lead role.  Once you accept the idea of a retired CIA agent with a heavy Irish accent, Neeson is never less than convincing as both a devoted, if hardly perfect, father and a ruthless murderer.  Once you accept the sincerity of both the character's love for his daughter and his regret for missing so much of her childhood, it becomes much more easier to accept the idea of this same character shooting an innocent bystander in the arm in order to get some information about his daughter's whereabouts.  Neeson brings so much needed gravity to both the role and the film. 

The various men that Neeson kills are all convincingly sleazy and Maggie Grace is rather sweet in the role of Neeson's daughter.  While the daughter, ultimately, remains more of a symbol of purity than an actual human being, Grace is likable enough in the role that one doesn't mind seeing her potential defilers brutally killed.  That's where the catharsis comes in.  In these times when the President of the United States is blithely assuring us that, as long as we're civil to them, we don't have to worry about terrorists trying to blow us up and when the American government is starting to resemble one of those high-minded but ultimately rather ineffectual parliaments that have come to typify Europe, there is something amazingly cathartic about seeing Liam Neeson gun a sleazy flesh peddler down without a sign of hesitation or a hint of guilt.

In the future, Taken may be remembered as the first film to truly benefit from America's growing torture nostalgia.

It may seem strange, to many American audiences, to realize that Taken is actually a French film.  Typically, brutal, non-martial arts-related action films are seen as being a solely American affair.  However, when viewing the actual movie, it becomes obvious that the story itself could have sprung only from the French subconscious. 

One need only consider that the film's villians are a group of immigrants who are thriving in Paris largely because the legal authorities -- as a result of financial corruption and personal weakness -- are impotent to stop them.  Instead, the only solution to the problem is for an American to come over to France and -- without the help of any actual French citizens -- brutally murder all of them.  Naturally, the American doesn't do this to help the French.  Instead, he does it because he feels that his "property" has been violated.  However, regardless of his reasons, the American still ends up doing what the French themselves want to do but what they ultimately -- because they are French and, as such, represent a higher ideal -- can not do.  And then, of course, the American promptly gets on a plane and goes away so that the French don't have to be reminded of his existence.

But, in the end, all of that is purely academic.  Beyond a handful of movie goers, that sort of thing really doesn't matter to anyone sitting in the audience.

To them, only one things matters.

Taken works.

My current state of being via The Clash

I'm so bored with the U.S.A.

Oscars -- Part Seven (Or is it Six? I've lost track.)

9:41 pm -- Eddie Murphy is out on stage now and he's apparently going to present the Hersholt Award to Jerry Lewis.  I'm going to take this oppurtunity to check my e-mail, make some popcorn, drink a coke, and maybe learn a new dance.

9:45 -- Jerry Lewis is accepting his award.  And he actually have a good speech so I owe him an apology.  Well, no, not really.  If anything, Lewis owes me an apology for not acting like the stereotypical Jerry Lewis that we've all come to know and love.

9:53 -- Zac Efron and Alicia Keyes are giving the Oscar for best original score.  The Oscar goes to Slumdog Millionaire.  The composer is A.R. Rahman, an Indian.  He is the second of Slumdog's winners to actually be from India.  He also gets Slumdog's first standing ovation.

9:55 -- Now, Efron and Keyes are moving on to Best Original song.  Efron looks painfully awkward standing next to Keyes.

9:56 -- Bruce Springsteen was not nominated this year for The Wrestler.  That still surprises me.

10:01 -- Slumdog Millionaire just won for best original song and it gets another standing ovation. I'm happy to see Slumdog winning so much but there is a part of me that's hoping that we get at least one upset winner before this show ends.  Either David Fincher or Gus Van Sant winning best director or Frank Langella taking best actor or something like that.  Otherwise, this is going to go down as one of the less interesting ceremonies in Oscar history.

10:06 -- The lovely Freida Pinto is co-presenting the award for Best Foreign Language Film.  Departures, a Japanese film, wins. 

10:08 -- I suppose that was a bit of an upset but not enough to redeem the entire evening.  No, we need an upset along the lines of Crash beating Brokeback Mountain.

10:10 -- Queen Latifah is introducing the annual montage of the recently dead.  Let's see if Robert Quarry, the star of the Count Yorga films, is included.

10:12 -- Among those I spotted: Cyd Charisse, Bernie Mac, Van Johnson, Michael Crichton, Nina Foch, Pat Hingle, Harold Pinter, Charles Joffe, Abby Mann, Roy Scheider, Robret Mulligan, Evelyn Keyes, Richard Widmark, Claude Berri, Maila Nurmi, Isaac Hayes, Ricardo Montalban, Manny Farber, Robert DoQui, Jules Dassin, Paul Scofield, Stan Winston, Ned Tanen, James Whitmore, Charlton Heston, Anthony Minghella, Sydney Pollack, and Paul Newman.  Jesus, a lot of talented people died last year.  Newman, as might be expected, got the most applause.  He was closely followed by Pollack and Hayes.  (Perhaps the audience is full of Scientologists...)

10:16 -- I wonder if anyone booed Heston.  They certainly didn't give him the type of applause you would expect to be given to someone who made as much money for the film industry as Heston did over his career.

10:17 -- Robert DoQui deserved more applause.

10:18 -- And no, Robert Quarry was not remembered.

10:19 -- Reese Whitherspoon is out on stage, looking as lovely as always.  She is giving the award for best director.  It seems pretty obvious that the award will go to Danny Boyle but I still think there could be an upset here. 

10:21 -- And there is not as Danny Boyle wins the award that he deserves.  David Fincher -- who looks quite a bit older than I expected -- looks annoyed.  Gus Van Sant looks depressed.  Boyle is giving his speech.  He just used the term "bloody."  Let's see if he drops the F-bomb.

10:22 -- C'mon, Danny, do it!

10:23 -- It's funny.  Danny Boyle looks exactly like how I would have imagined him to look if I was forming an image based solely on films like Slumdog and Trainspotting.  Fincher, meanwhile, looks nothing like how I imagined the director Zodiac, Seven, and Fight Club would look.

10:25 -- Okay, I'm going to post this and I assume my next post will be my final one of the night.

The Oscars -- Part Four

8:52 pm -- We're back and Hugh Jackman's doing another musical number.  God, I hate musical numbers.

8:54 -- I'm sure that these musical numbers will be widely acclaimed tomorrow but it's actually rather tedious. 

8:56 -- Uhmmm, it's not over yet.

8:57 -- Will it ever end?  This is like the musical number that would not end.  It's a bit like watching one of those old episodes of One Day At A Time where Bonnie Franklin and her children and her neighbors and her building's super would put on some show at the retirement home.

8:58 -- Finally, it's over and we've gone to commercial.  Jackman's partner in that musical number was Beyonce Knowles.  People tend to get excited about Beyonce for the same reason that those dogs used to salivate whenever Pavlov rang that bell.

9:00 -- I love this new, rather morbid Jack In The Box ad campaign.  Will Jack live or will he die?  I was one of the kids traumatized when they blew him up back in the early 80s.

9:01 -- We're back and I guess we're giving the best supporting award as we've just seen a montage of George Burns, Christopher Walken, Tommy Lee Jones, Robin Williams, and Morgan Freeman giving their acceptance speeches. 

9:02 -- And our presenters for this award are former winners Christopher Walken, Kevin Kline, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Joel Grey, and Alan Arkin.  Is anyone else breathing a sigh of relief that Robin Williams didn't come out on stage?

9:04 -- Arkin is honoring Philip Seymour Hoffman, who is nominated for playing a priest in Doubt.  Grey is honoring Josh Brolin, nominated for Milk.  Gooding, Jr. is paying tribute to Robert Downey, Jr. and it turns out we didn't need Robin Williams.  Walken talks about Michael Shannon's performance in Revolutionary Road.  I wonder if he resents having to always talk about how well an actor plays insane.  Lastly, Kevin Kline is paying tribute to Heath Ledger's performance in The Dark Knight.

9:08 -- To no one's surprise, Heath Ledger becomes the first actor since Peter Finch to win an Oscar despite being dead.  And I can't really complain about the decision.  Whereas Finch's death led to him winning a leading oscar for supporting role in Network, Ledger gave one of the best supporting performances of 2008.  Still, I wonder if anyone would have realized just how good Ledger was if not for the fact of his tragic death.  Intellectually, I was rooting for Robert Downey, Jr. but emotionally, the Ledger victory feels right.

9:12 -- Ledger's Oscar was accepted by his father, mother, and daughter.  Michelle Williams was not mentioned.

9:13 -- Ah shit.  Bill Maher just came out on stage.  I guess he's giving the documentary award.

9:14 -- Maher's doing the whole "I didn't get nominated but I'm not bitter" routine.  Maher has truly become one of the most repulsive characters on the planet.  Every time I see him, he seems to have transformed just a little bit more into Alan Alda's character from Crimes and Misdemeanors.

9:16 -- The German documentary winners take the time to do a few magic tricks on stage and to utter a few jabs at Werner Herzog.  Maher stares on in confusion as one of the Germans balances the Oscar on his chin.

9:18 -- The winner for Documetary Short Subject, however, is not only an American but an American woman.  What this means is that her speech isn't all that interesting or entertaining.  However, it is dreadfully earnest and tedious.

9:20 -- Yeah, you read that right.